Puddle(s) of Diamond
by bacchus.paine
Summary: Femslash. Beginning after the events of New X-Men #118 when Jean speaks to the public about the outing of the school, Jean and Emma find themselves embroiled in an investigation of one of their teammates and in desires for one another neither of them expected - a supplemental story running alongside what you see in New X-Men.
1. Chapter 1

_-marvel owns these characters, not me - I just took a shot at filling in blanks after New X-Men 139 when Jean gives her speech to the press at the mansion, and on explaining why Jean tore into Emma more than Scott when she discovered their affair-_

Emma was floored as she stumbled absentmindedly down the hallway. Usually she was vomiting in her mouth over how perfect Jean was supposed to be. She had spent hours telling herself how no real person was just that perfect. But, in spite of herself, Emma had to admit, today was impressive.

She was sitting there, watching, listening inside of their heads. They bought it. Every single one of them. All on their own. HOW did Jean do that?

Emma's head was a mix of anger at morons, individual and aggregate, indignation at being chastised in public, and, what? She'd spent a large portion of the day just staring at Jean, wondering how it could possibly be that everything came so easily to her. Jean pled - not influenced - and all those people fell for her, just watching. She'd been mesmerizing without any powers at all.

Emma sighed and kept putting one foot absentmindedly in front of the other. She turned diamond, looking to go dull. Slowly, she lifted her left arm until her knuckle slid across the wall, and she unfolded her hand and scraped the edge of the wall with the tip of her crystalline fingernail, watching it fold over the corner as she turned it, only to see a flash of red before her face and feel a dull thud against her form. She looked up from the wall and saw Jean floating just above the floor.

"Walking, here, Frost. You're a serious bull in a china cabinet today, you know?"

"I - I'm sorry." She was back to flesh now. She reached out her hand to Jean. "My mind was elsewhere."

"Obviously." Jean took her hand and lifted herself up. "What's with the rock?"

"That was an effort toward elsewhere."

Jean had to smile, and it took a moment to remember to let go of Emma's hand. They stood still for a moment looking at one another.

"Uh - " they each started at once.

"Well, I -" Emma looked down, suddenly feeling ridiculous. She looked back into Jean's eyes and blurted out, "You were impressive today."

Emma almost put her hand up to cover her mouth. Jean's eyes widened significantly and then narrowed until they were almost shut. Emma stuttered to say, "I mean, it's impressive that you could hold those imbeciles' hands through a hefty helping of reality without vomiting all over them."

Jean settled as she realized how off-kilter Emma was. "What's going on with you, Emma? You've been acting weird all day. I don't want to be up in your business or anything, but at this point you're threatening civilians." Emma's eyes thinned. "Oh, chill out, Frosty, I'm trying to help."

Emma cringed. *I just realized I've been playing you in a fantasy because I want you.* She was shielded off, and Jean couldn't hear her, but she needed a lie quickly because she couldn't just shield her eyes that easily. "I guess there are some things you discover about yourself that it takes some time to get used to," Jean opened her mouth to interrupt but Emma continued "yes, yes, I can surprise even myself. Are you alright?"

Jean nodded.

"Good." Emma walked past Jean and turned at her first chance.


	2. Chapter 2

Emma was reading in her silky night things, buried in a plush Victorian chair, when she felt an itch. *Emma* she heard, whispered in her head.

*Scott, are you crazy, you little fuck? You're being loud.*

*Definitely crazy.*

*Not today* she said, and went to diamond to shut her telepathy off, closing her book. She stood up to look out the window and was interrupted by a knock on the door, an insistent knock, though not belligerent.

She walked slowly to the door and opened it without considering her form or her attire.

Jean stood wide-eyed and still at the door. Still, for a long time. She said nothing, but her eyes dropped along Emma and her lips parted.

"Can I help you?" Emma snapped, an apprehensive quiver in her voice.

"We have… Cerebro lecture with the telepath runts. The way things have been going they may have to actually use it." She looked back into Emma's eye, and got her bearings. "Geez, Emma, I'm not gonna hurt you. Or read your mind… though I'm sure you would like that."

Emma felt herself get a little wet and it forced the diamond form away, leaving her nipples hard. _Fuck_.

Jean swallowed.

"Right. Sorry, let me change out of this handkerchief," Emma replied.

"Into a different one?"

"Into some kind of leather, if you must know. No one's paid any attention to the atrocious covering on the portable classroom chairs."

"Uh huh," Jean retorted.

Emma turned, leaving Jean standing at the door, and walked to the closet, swinging its door open. She pulled out a pair of white leather pants and bent to slide them up her legs, over her hips, thrusting the curve of her cheeks out at Jean as she did. Jean's head tilted as she watched Emma's ass flex. With her back to Jean at the door, Emma slipped the little silk tanktop off and reached into the closet for a white long-sleeved corset, letting it crawl down her back as she felt Jean's eyes on her, pulling the laces tight behind her and turning as the corset urged her breasts back into her chest.

Jean felt her own nipples get hard. She shook her head, and turned around to walk toward the class as Emma slipped on her shoes and followed.


	3. Chapter 3

Jean stood up straight before the handful of telepathic students, at least one of them probably too weak to ever successfully use Cerebro. "As always," Jean began, "this challenge is about balancing the pull of the astral plane with this planet's first-person presence. Except, in this instance, you'll find the pull of letting go of your senses completely much more resounding. It _will_ seduce you. You have to focus on how you'd get back, what your destination would be when you got there. If that's what you're focused on, that's where you've stayed."

Emma felt the need to interrupt, although she felt again in awe of Jean, the attraction gnawing at her against her will. "Still, you cannot ignore the need to let go entirely, or you lose your ability to be creative in your searching. If something pricks in your head, explore it –"

"Just be careful – Cerebro can easily amplify a 'disable' command to the point that it would kill." Jean finished.

Five terrified faces bore back at them from the desk chairs.

"You probably won't ever have to use it…" Emma said, tinge of hope in her voice.

"But now that people know about us, there's really no telling who's coming, but whoever comes is going to be looking to disable the telepaths to cut off communication. If they focus on us, you may need this. But no one here is getting elevated to active duty. We'll do everything we can to make sure you don't do any fighting," Jean said.

"We just want you to be ready if you have to."

Neither Jean nor Emma had any confidence when the class was finished that any one of those kids could sit down in the dome and take out all intruders with this machine, save anyone wearing one of the two immune helmets on Earth, but at least the kids had tried.

After the students had gone, Emma sat perched on the desk looking at their empty chairs, butt scooted back on the surface so that her calves touched the sides. She leaned over her arms, which she perched along the edge to support a slump, pushing her tits together.

Jean stood with her arms crossed and her back straight, staring out of the doorway through the empty hall beyond. "I don't see those kids handling Cerebro. I'm afraid it will just kill them. I don't know if I like that as a backup plan."

"Well," Emma began, leaning forward and purring in her voice, "it's a backup plan for an unlikely contingency."

"Are you kidding me right now?"

"Hardly, darling," Emma said.

"I'm not sure how you could possibly think that Xavier going on a national broadcast and outing us as mutants isn't going to increase our likelihood of attack."

Emma looked sideways, and then turned to catch Jean's tight green sweater hugging her tits. "The way you handled the conference the other day, I think we may actually be okay. And most of the people who would kill us if they knew where we were have tried to kill us once or twice already."

Jean, unconsciously trailing her finger down her thigh, just looked at Emma.

In a sudden burst of movement for the still room, Scott took the opportunity to open the door and begin an "H" sound, cutting his forward motion and his speech off when he realized both women were in the room. He cut himself off, then began again, "Hi there."

Both looked at him, and he looked back and forth, then he clenched his teeth and said, "I – I came to debrief on the training, but I forgot my notes. I'll be back." Scott turned and took brisk long steps out of the room.

"What the –" Jean began.

"Was he just drunk-looking to you?" Emma asked.

"I don't know. But I don't really know him, maybe. Not right now." Jean paused. "I think we should tell the class that we've decided Cerebro is not even available as a last resort."

Emma jumped up off the desk and walked over to face Jean from a couple of feet away. "It's your decision," she said, looking pointedly at Jean, and she started to turn to leave before Jean's voice stopped her.

"Maybe," Jean leaned forward, "but I'd actually like to know if you disagree with me that they'll just end up dead…"

"I haven't been especially effective in the past with keeping children alive, so I'll let someone else try," Emma said darkly, looking at the floor.

Jean's eyes narrowed with empathy. She stepped to Emma and wrapped her fingers around Emma's shoulder, squeezing with the tips. Emma could smell Jean's hair as it swung in her direction, crisp and sort of minty.

"There was absolutely nothing you could have done for any of those children on Genosha. Absolutely nothing." She reached to put her other hand on Emma's cheek.

Emma felt a pulse through Jean's hand, into her temple, and she leaned immeasurably toward Jean's palm, looking up into big green eyes. Jean licked her lips.

Emma just stared back, still.

Then Jean lunged forward into Emma's lips, meaning to be gentle with a peck, maybe headed for the cheek, if she'd really been thinking about it, but Emma found herself lunging into the kiss. They crashed against one another with abrupt abandon, surprised but compliant, tongues contacting one another in the rush, Emma pushing up onto her toes to drive into Jean, both of them lost in the wet warmth of the contact.

Emma's hands slid onto Jean's back, and, after a while, they eased into caressing kisses, parting slowly.

Then they just looked up at one another. Emma thought of Scott and quickly closed off the thought. She found herself caught in looking at Jean again.

Jean shuffled backward, "I'm s – I – ."

"Oh, darling, don't go being sorry," Emma sneered.

Jean smiled, and as she realized she'd begun to grin she reached her hand up to cover her mouth. "I still think you're a bitch," she told Emma through her fingers.

"So do I."

Jean laughed in spite of herself, but the confusion over what had just passed between them was throwing her off, and she had no idea what else to say. She settled on, "I better go see what was wrong with Scott," and she hurried out of the door.

Jean wasn't really looking for Scott. In fact, she hoped desperately to avoid him, but standing in the room with Emma she couldn't seem to think of anything except kissing Emma and that was presently unacceptable. _Where the fuck did that come from? _Sure, sure, Emma was walking sex. And now, Jean had begun to suspect that the whole changing escapade was purposeful more than careless, as Jean had previously supposed it to be.

Jean turned from the stark metal hallway onto the staircase, wound up the steps until dark mahogany surrounded her, and took long strides toward her room, blocking out as much of the mansion as she could on the way. Relieved at the sight of her doorway, she swept her mind into the room, scanning for Scott, and found him blissfully absent. She stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and leaned backward against it, dropping her head against the wood and exhaling.

*You sure know how to leave a girl hanging* she heard Emma chide into her head.

She chose not to respond.


	4. Chapter 4

For the next three weeks, Scott stood baffled at the distance imposed by his women. He barely saw Jean anymore, but of course that had been in the works for a while. Jean was busy being healthy and in control and on top of things, running the school and knocking back PR hardballs. But Emma… this was the longest they'd gone without any mental tryst in a while. Sometimes Scott would dream that it was happening again, but in the dreams everything was different.

Emma's Jean had traded the official Phoenix costume for some kind of stripwear, a black leather corset squeezing her breasts and a black leather garter belt, high heeled boots. They were somewhere they'd never been before, a room with a stage surrounded by mirrors, and Emma's Jean just danced, running her hands along her body, touching herself. He'd found himself in this dream a few different times now, but every time he'd found that he couldn't manage to touch her himself. He would wake up so disheartened that he didn't try to seek Emma out awake.

Emma was glad, though she wasn't aware she was projecting her dreams through the particular secret mental channel she also used to mind-fuck Scott.

At first, after she kissed Jean, she'd stood in shock. Oh, sure, she thought Jean beautiful, transcendantly so, for a long long time. And, certainly, Jean's buoyant porcelain breasts poking out of various tight things had not escaped Emma's attention. Jean was a sight, to be sure. And powerful. Massively powerful. Force-to-crush-a-planet powerful. Heaven-stuffed malleable breasts. But saintly, always saintly.

And then the day of the speech there had been something else… a sort of conductor-crush. Like Emma wanted to be controlled along with anyone else. And then Jean had kissed her.

The first time they'd run into one another after, the next day, Jean had been standing talking to Hank at the door of the parlor as Emma walked down the hall, and their eyes met. Hank was talking, but Jean was only staring at her, their bright eyes holding onto one another.

*Hello,* Emma said, and she let her mind fall to the wordless, lascivious thoughts she had on Jean's body, purposefully.

Jean blushed, turned her eyes back to Hank, and answered his question as Emma walked by.

Jean avoided Emma for long stretches in the mansion. When she did end up in the same room with the White Queen, she did her best to keep her mind on other conversations. She had no idea what to do with her desire for Emma, a desire she'd really only just admitted existed at all. And she wondered if what she desired was really just a break from the chill of Scott.

In this manner three weeks passed before Jean decided she would need to go to back to where Xorn emerged for some investigating, and that she would have to take Emma with her. It was either Emma or one of the telepathic runts who'd probably end up schizophrenic and torn from what needed to be done. Even if they didn't, Xorn might see in their faces what they saw in China.


	5. Chapter 5

"Hi," Jean said flatly when Emma walked into the hangar, dressed in some sort of white, thin, silky version of the black leather uniform Jean wore. _White Queen, Black Queen, I guess_, Jean thought, noticing the pull against the silky material that held Emma's breasts where Emma's nipples stood erect beneath it.

Emma carried only an overnight bag, and she purred a "hi" at Jean as she passed by and slung her bag over the ladder and onto a chair, climbing in. Jean watched Emma's glutes flex as she stepped up the platform.

"I'd rather not fly this thing," Emma said, "so I sure hope you know how."

"Scott knows how," Jean said, "so that'll be sufficient." Emma was turned away from Jean, but she smiled. _She is a badass, really, in her own way_.

"Let's get this over with," Jean said.

"How do you know it won't be fun?" Emma asked, plopping into the copilot seat.

Jean cracked a smile. "We're going old school just in case. It should take us an hour."

"Christ," Emma whined. "Must we be pedestrian about it?"

"I don't want to draw any attention," Jean said.

"Alright, boss." Emma leaned back into her chair, and Jean lit the Blackbird up. They waited for the roof to open through the school, then Jean lifted the bird off the deck and headed for the Pacific.

Jean was surprised to find that the flight passed almost instantly, as she and Emma discussed the task at hand, the students, the school's coming out of the mutant closet, the changes in Xavier. Not the kissing. Jean hadn't let herself realize before how funny Emma was. She found herself laughing so frequently and with such abandon that she was glad for the Shiar-quality autopilot. Finally, as they neared their destination, Jean drummed up the courage to ask, "So… what's in the bag? It hardly seems big enough for a single change of clothes, much less an extended stay. But we shouldn't need more than the day."

"I'm a shockingly efficient packer," Emma told her, grinning.

"Oh, I get it – you're so used to being mostly-naked that you decided to just scrap clothes altogether. Makes sense."

"Forgive me for thinking that fabric should be used minimally. Skin is just better."

That gave Jean pause, as her thoughts turned to Emma's skin. Emma turned away and smiled so as to avoid alerting Jean that her thoughts were loud.


	6. Chapter 6

They landed in their remote Chinese province in a field meant for cows, jet cloaked, leaving Emma's bag in the jet as they stepped outside. "I'll fly us over to the barn," Jean said.

Emma wondered how Jean knew where Xorn's former prison was, but quickly chalked it up to Jean's just being sort of on top of things in a way other people never thought to be. They both scanned around them for human brains, and, finding none, Jean lifted Emma off the ground.

It was an odd feeling, being carried around by someone's mind. She could feel the touch of Jean's psyche all over her body. She sensed a somehow tighter grip below her ass, and it made her wiggle from side to side.

She felt the need to explain her wiggle: "Easy, there, Tiger. I'm not a magic mop."

They were almost forty feet off the ground. "Yes," Jean said, "you're way harder to carry than a mop," and she mimed a balance with her hands, grinned mischievously, and then let go of Emma.

Emma felt the hold on her release and promptly started barreling toward the ground. She shifted to diamond instinctually, and was hardly pleased when Jean caught her again just before she smacked the Earth.

*You're funny* Emma said.

*You just needed to learn a little lesson.* And Jean brought her back up and started them both toward the farm, Emma's skin glistening in the sunlight all the way.

Something was up with Xorn, and Jean knew it. What she didn't know was how he could manage to hide whatever it was he was hiding from her. But something… something wasn't right, and a few days ago Jean had watched as he watched his students leave the classroom, him lingering in the hallway with his arms crossed in front of him, his posture that of a man with purpose. Jean had read enough minds underneath such postures to know they usually meant machinations. She had decided then that anyone left on Earth who had seen Xorn in a weakened state, as a captive, or who had witnessed the explosion that led to his release, was her only hope of looking inside his helmet. She hoped, desperately, to find in these people some fleeting thought that had come from him or some greater understanding of where he had really come from. She wasn't sure exactly how he would have put any thoughts into anyone's head, but something told her it was a possibility.

She'd explained all this to Emma, of course, when she'd asked Emma to come with her to China. To her surprise, Emma hadn't questioned her logic – or the fact that this trip appeared to be to chase one of Jean's random instincts – at all. Instead, she'd simply nodded and asked when they would leave. She'd expected Jean to explain how exactly they would go about their little investigation on the way, but somehow they hadn't stopped bantering about other matters long enough during the flight to allow it.

Emma waited until they began to descend to change back from her diamond form. "It appears you have a destination in mind," she said to Jean.

"We're here, or close enough. First order of business is to scan the area and see who's here. We should both look now. If I find anyone, or if you do, let's focus on them together."

Emma was suspended a quarter mile above the ground, and Jean was holding her in space so that she looked Jean in the eye. "Okay," she said. "I do trust you can focus on keeping me from falling while you scan."

"Don't be ridiculous," Jean said, and she closed her eyes. Emma followed.

They swept over the rather desolate landscape in outward circles, looking for pings. "You know," Emma said, forcing Jean to stop and open her eyes, "we could have done a dry run with Cerebro before we came all the way out here. Just a thought."

"No, we couldn't," Jean said. "I can't risk anyone else knowing what we're doing out here. I'm not sure I trust anyone anymore."

It occurred to Emma that Jean was trusting her, and she couldn't fathom why Jean would trust her, of all people, in the face of a turncoat threat. At this moment she looked curiously into Jean, and suddenly she felt very aware that the two of them were floating up here all alone, together, where nothing in the world could touch them. Then Emma was surprised to find just how at ease she felt, floating here a quarter mile above China. Jean looked back at her, and it was clear Jean was no longer scanning either.

They were interrupted by the appearance of two minds driving toward them from about a mile away. They both felt it, a little tickle against sensitized consciousness, and they both turned their heads toward the faraway car.

*He knows the barn,* Jean thought at Emma. She carried them closer to the car. Emma kept looking into the driver.

Closer now, she shuffled through the recesses of his mind and found and acquaintance with the barn. *I've got him. He wasn't there, but he heard about it. There's village ten or so miles from here where two guys still live.*

*Alright, let's start there.*

Jean sat them down on the outskirts of a thatched, sort of makeshift village in a patch of trees with barely any concrete. As Emma turned her back to Jean, Jean saw the laces down the corset on Emma's back, the only type of blouse-binding Emma seemed willing to wear, had fallen loose. "Wait," she said to Emma, prompting Emma to freeze and turn with a questioning look.

"Not that any of these people are going to see this, but…" she approached Emma and stepped behind her, reaching down for the corset strings, and finding that her hands just had to graze along Emma's back to grab them and reform the tie. Emma felt a prick of heat at Jean's touch.

"Uh… thank you," she said. Jean just smiled. "So," she said, starting to walk again, "how do you intend to play this?"

"There's one restaurant in the town, or, sort of a restaurant. I figure we sit there looking Chinese until one of these guys comes around or someone comes in who we can dig into for their present locations."

So, they sat down in the little room/watering hole/eatery with a single barmaid, who brought them water without their asking (at least, not verbally) and whom they made sure had no interest in knowing who they were or why they were there.

Emma turned off the barmaid's ability to hear her conversation with Jean before she said, "My god, I can't believe people live like this," looking up toward the two-burner "kitchen" totally exposed within the restaurant and out onto the farmland visible through the open wall behind it. "We may as well be on a desert island."

"Oh, don't be so pretentious, Emma. It IS possible to enjoy the simple life."

"It is for morons." Jean suppressed a smile. Emma continued, "Being poor is one thing. Being happy to stay poor is another." Emma leaned back on her stool, stretching, pushing her breasts out toward Jean, who did not miss the opportunity to ogle them.

"You think she's happy to stay poor?" Jean asked.

"Haven't you checked?"

"No I… I thought I saw you do it when we walked in."

"There's some Phoenix force for you. No, I didn't. Hang on." Emma went into the woman's mind and found the faces of the men the driver had thought of with the barn. "She knows them. Wanna join me?"

"Lead the way," Jean said, and she moved her probing presence next to Emma's so that they walked in the woman's thoughts together in this same room, landing on the features in her memory that matched what they were seeking.

As they stood together, they saw the men standing dirty and ragged near the door they day Xorn was "freed," met by a much bigger crowd than Emma had imagined could fit in this shithole, panting and disoriented. One of them had a long gash along his arm, which the barmaid tended.

Emma and Jean relived the whole episode with the barmaid, noting that the men remarked repeatedly about how they could not understand how anyone would have moved explosives in, or how Xorn released the bindings. And now, they knew which houses in the village to visit.

Jean left some yuan on the table and they walked out of the door as the sun started to set. They stopped near the first of the houses and reached inside telepathically. The man hardly understood what had happened the day Xorn escaped, but he knew enough to make clear that the entire crew of survivors had been totally baffled by that escape, certain that the bounds that held him were of a technology that should not be broken and certain that there had been no one anywhere nearby to assist in the escape.

"That's disheartening," Jean said.

"What, you mean because it suggests Xorn's captivity was a façade in the first place?"

Jean said yes by looking dully at the ground, realizing that Emma was right. No other explanation would fit. _There is something of a brain under that dumb blonde façade, too._ But when Jean scanned inside the second house, she found that the man who could confirm that suspicion wouldn't return until tomorrow from a location his wife didn't know.

Emma said, "Oh god, we have to stay here overnight?" but she was thinking more along the lines of _hmm, I guess we're staying overnight_.

"It looks that way."

"Where in god's name can we sleep in this shithole?"

"Nowhere, here, I don't think. But I also think it'd be a waste of time to fly back for a few hours…" Jean hesitated, "let me find out." She went back to the barmaid and located an inn about fifty miles away. "Closest thing is about fifty miles from here."

"Are we flying? I need my bag…" Emma tried not to broadcast how much she was looking forward to the feel of Jean's mind cupping her ass over a fifty-mile flight.

Jean nodded, and started her telekinesis in just the spot Emma had hoped, lifting them from the ground.


	7. Chapter 7

It was hardly an "inn." The patriarch had simply begun to rent his son's bedrooms while the boys were away in the army. He offered them the luxury of a private bathroom, and noted in a pleased voice that he had a large bed for the newlyweds to share.

*Newlyweds?!* They thought simultaneously. They'd appeared to him as a young Chinese couple, and neither had realized that the ways their bodies moved in relation to one another screamed their excitement to every observer.

Jean thanked him in Chinese, at least in his mind, and he led them to the room, closing the door behind them.

"I suppose this could be worse. The bed doesn't appear to be made of straw," Emma said. "Did you want to… er… shower first?" She pushed her mind away from the thought of Jean standing wet and naked a few yards away.

"Go ahead," Jean said, wondering if Emma would strip down right in front of her again. Emma turned, stepped toward the bathroom, and pulled at the string of her corset, which caught on the knot Jean had tied earlier.

"Um… what did you do, tie this in a sailor's knot?"

"How kind of you to be so gracious for my earlier assistance. Here," and she reached her hand out toward Emma. Emma walked back to Jean and turned her back, leaning over slightly and jutting her ass out toward Jean, who couldn't help but look at it. Jean clasped her fingers around the knot, letting the sides of her hands fall onto the small of Emma's back and brush against her as she untied. As the knot fell apart, Jean flattened her hands against Emma's spine, her thumbs sliding under the edges of the loosened corset. Emma tensed and made a decision.

She turned against Jean's hands, moving toward Jean, reveling in Jean's surprise as she shifted into Jean's palms so that she was left facing Jean with both of Jean's hands on her stomach. She looked up.

"Emma, I…"

"Enough, darling," Emma said. "I have a really simple question for you."

Jean only looked back expectantly in response.

Emma reached out and put her hand on Jean's cheek, recalling Jean's previous comforting touch and feeling as much comfort in this one. Then she moved her lips to Jean's paralyzed form.

Jean broke her stillness at Emma's kiss, parting her lips for Emma's, pulling her mouth together on Emma's. Emma plunged into her now, Emma's tongue searching in Jean and meeting Jean's equally enthusiastic touch. Emma slid her other hand around Jean's back and drug her nails down Jean's spine, eliciting a moan.

Jean's hips fell against Emma's, hard. Their kissing intensified, devouring, as their hands moved over the curves of one another's bodies. Jean heated. Emma melted. When the temperature began to rise too quickly, Emma leaned backward and opened her eyes. Fire stared back at her.

Emma thought for a moment about how to react, and she certainly hadn't moved. Jean was cupping her ass, and she could feel Jean's pulse through her hips. Emma slipped her fingers under Jean's shirt, sliding her knuckles against the flat of Jean's stomach, and then pinched the fabric with her thumbs and slid her hands up Jean's chest, slowly, trailing up her ribs and under and over her breasts. She slipped the shirt over Jean's head, and off of it.

"Heavens." Emma's cheeks drew into a grin as she continued, "Are you always this hot? As measured in degrees? I recognize that you're generally breathtaking…" The fire smoldered a little, but it remained.

"I – I suppose – I know I'm generally warm…"

"No," Emma laughed lightly, and she opened up her mind to show Jean what she was looking at. The fire snuffed out. "Oh, no I rather like that. That, I want you to keep. It's the heat." Emma lifted her arm off of Jean's waist and held it up. It glowed pink. "I fear I might not look appetizing in a moment here."

"Ah," Jean said. "That's," Jean began to giggle, "that's never happened to me before." She finished the giggle in a huge smirk, and a tiny point of light began in the center of her pupil. "Do you trust me?" She asked Emma. _Should I?_, Emma thought to herself.

"Yes," Emma said aloud, unequivocally, and immediately she felt a rush when she knew she meant it. She felt a prickling among the nerves in her head, falling lightly down her back. Jean lifted her right hand off of Emma's ass, slid away and let her own eyes fall closed as she learned. When her lids lifted, her pupils were dilated and enflamed. She touched the tip of her finger to the top of Emma's arm, and, where her nail made contact with it, a slightly wider crescent of diamond formed beneath it. As she flattened her hand against Emma's forearm the diamond spread around it. Then Jean took her hand away and the diamond evaporated.

Emma was still tingling. "Oh my," she said.

"You could feel my hand?"

"Yes, darling." Jean smiled a mischievous smile.

"Problem solved."

"At some point I'm going to need you to teach me that." Emma reached out and unzipped Jean's pants, stuffing one hand down inside and pushing them onto the floor with the other. She slid her fingers slyly across Jean's clit and pulled her hand out again, dragging her middle finger over her own tongue.

Jean tugged without hands on Emma' shirt, ripped it apart. The pants, then. The bra. _Huh, fake_. She plunged her head down into Emma's breasts, crushing her face against them both. She took Emma's nipple in her mouth, holding it lightly between her teeth, then began to suck. Emma moaned, and her hips bucked, and she reached forward and hooked her nail in Jean's panties so she could return the ripping favor. She jerked Jean toward her and the fabric tore, slowly now, so that Emma had to grab a fistful and give it a yank to free Jean's ass. She drove her hips into Jean so that they both stumbled backward, and Jean fell onto the bed, Emma's arms pinned down on either side of her.

Emma stretched down like a cat and took Jean's nipple in her mouth, sliding her hands down to knead Jean's breasts, loving their plump pliability, panting with excitement as Jean's breath pushed her chest outward into Emma in rhythm. Jean's temperature began to rise.

Jean moved her hands into Emma's hair, lifting her face, urging her into a kiss. Emma's body fell down against Jean, flattening her into the bed as Emma ground her hips down against Jean's.

Jean ground back into to Emma so hard she turned them both over, and as the fire blazed in Jean's eyes she ravished Jean's neck, breasts, bellybutton, breasts, hips, the crease of her thigh, then she spread Jean's legs apart and fell between them.

Jean was sopping wet, tilting her pelvis up toward Emma in anticipation. Emma teased Jean, licking every inch of her labia and nibbling at the inner crease of her thigh, before she slid her tongue, flattened, onto Jean's slit, sliding upward and suckling Jean's clit. She exhaled with hunger. Jean moaned, and heated more, writhing on the scratchy sheets. Emma continued at her, hungry and soft and wet, until she started to feel the heat as mild pain.

The signal of the pain triggered a ping to Jean, and suddenly Emma's tongue and lips were diamond, though they still moved fluidly over and into Jean's sex. Jean cried out at the effect of the change in pressure, Emma lapping rabidly now, and bucked her hips against Emma's face. Now she could feel the pulse of Emma's pleasure through their connection, could feel Emma relishing the taste of her, feel Emma wanting more as she sucked. Emma kept at it, little puddles of diamond appearing as her shoulders or fingertips touched Jean's steaming form, and soon Jean was exploding with the most intense orgasm of her life, pleasure sweeping over and through her as her neck fell back into the pillow. Emma teased Jean's still-throbbing clit with the tip of her tongue, and it took a good while for Jean to cool enough for the diamond to disappear.

Emma rolled her face up the flat of Jean's stomach, resting her cheek between Jean's breasts.

"Emma… that was… there are no words."

Emma smiled and let the compliment sit for a few moments before she said, "I have to ask, darling… you were never that hot before? With… anyone?"

"No. Though I'll admit something is shifting lately with the phoenix force. It's like it's unsettled. Wild." Jean looked over at Emma's bared breasts, reaching out her hand to flick the nipple. "But it's especially motivated right now." Jean leaned down and took Emma's nearest nipple in her mouth, reveling in the glory of Emma's breasts, and Emma let her head fall back on the pillow. Jean's hand snuck down Emma's stomach, and Jeaned pulled the last of their underwear off in a surprisingly expert motion, slid her hand onto Emma's sex and almost immersed it in the wetness. Jean explored Emma with her hand, dipping inside, sliding her hand upward and squeezing Emma's clit lightly between her fingers. "At the moment, it wants to taste you," and before Emma could react Jean glided downward and fell upon Emma's pussy.

Jean's enthusiasm surprised Emma, though by then perhaps it shouldn't have. Jean's hands ran all over Emma as her mouth worked, cupping Emma's ass again and reaching up to squeeze her tits and massaging Emma's upper thigh. Emma felt a little jolt of electricity wherever Jean touched her, and she grew even wetter as she felt Jean's mouth heating. "Christ, Jean…" Emma whispered, grinding her pelvis upward at Jean.

*Down girl,* Jean thought at Emma. *I'm going to make you come. But you can't come until I say so.* Emma let Jean stay there, in her head, telling her to relax when Jean slowed, heating her up when Jean thought of sucking her and then did.

*Oh, Christ, please,* Emma thought, surprised at how hot it felt to be commanded.

*Wait.*

Emma's body was writhing, squirming on the sheets under Jean's mouth, and she felt as though she would explode. Jean deepened the movement of her mouth, *Delicious,* and Emma exploded with orgasm.

As Emma's body went limp, Jean slid back upward and played with her breasts, sucking still, and then moved up to rest the whole long heat of her body against Emma's, landing a deep kiss on Emma's lips as they both tasted the combination of their own juices with the other woman's on their tongues.

*I've wanted this,* Emma thought to Jean, surprised at herself for this exposure.

*I still want it.*

*Here I thought you hated me.*

*Maybe a little, but probably no more than you hate me.* Emma smiled in the kiss.

"I haven't hated you in a while," she said aloud. Jean leaned forward and kissed the tip of Emma's nose.

"I hated you for stripping in front of me the day of Cerebro class. I didn't want to want this."

"But you do."

"God help me."

"I don't need God's help," Emma said, and she flipped Jean over and pushed her own body up into a plank. "Spread your legs."

Jean obliged.

Emma dropped her body between Jean's legs and leaned down, kissing Jean again, urgently now, whispering *I want every part of you.*

*Then take it.*

Emma lifted her chest up as she kissed Jean, pulling her right leg beneath Jean's and pushing Jean's leg upward so that it rested against the side of her stomach. She took her left hand off of Jean's breasts and sought Jean's clit, finding it still ungodly wet. She shifted herself, bringing her clit to her fingers and to Jean's, then took her hand away and pressed her sex onto Jean's. Jean moaned, breaking their kiss, and Emma smiled again when Jean opened her eyes and revealed the new flames.

Emma thrust her clit into Jean, riding, throbbing at the feel of Jean's slippery clit beneath her. She tapped at Jean's mind, and Jean opened up the sensation to her. Emma returned the favor. Now every burst of pleasure from either of them was a burst for them both. Emma felt Jean's body begin to heat when Jean released herself more into the pleasure, and she quickened her pace immeasurably.

Emma had not noticed her own temperature rising, but now she wasn't slowed by Jean's heat, she was quickened. She burst into Jean as Jean's hips rose to meet her, both of their breasts now bouncing with abandon as they slid along one another, each of them overwhelmed with sensation. Emma's intensity increased and Jean felt it. Jean matched her arousal – the connection between their minds had them each feeling every rush of the other – and bucked upward at an increased pace. They went together from moans to nearly screaming, and ground themselves into one another as orgasm took them both, at once, echoing endlessly through each so that they still moved into one another, coming, for what felt like hours.

It wasn't the dénouement of their orgasm that ended it, it was simple physical exhaustion. They drew energy from one another to continue until there was nothing left in either, then Emma collapsed on top of Jean, sated beyond belief. They both succumbed to sleep almost immediately, Emma falling left with her face buried in Jean's breast, arms still wrapped around one another.


	8. Chapter 8

The little room had only one window and no serious decorations to reflect its light. Emma woke first when a shaft of sunlight flowed through it, opening her eyes onto the curve of Jean's breast, and she smiled. _Yep, that really happened_. She stretched, caressing Jean with her naked skin and waking her.

Jean's eyes opened slowly, her mind still drowned in pleasure that was renewed as she woke to the feel of Emma against her. "Mm… good morning," Jean said.

"To you as well."

Jean rolled to take Emma in her arms. Emma felt vulnerability, and it scared her, but she heard herself say, "I've been … waiting so … for this." Jean smiled, but she wondered at the statement.

"What is _this_?" she asked Emma. Emma thought for a moment.

"I don't know, exactly. All I know is that I want more of it." And she peeled her face back so that she could look at Jean, whose face voiced no disagreement but wore a certain curiosity. They fell into a kiss, a slow kiss, reveling in each other.

Emma pulled back smiling. "I suppose we never managed to handle the shower."

"I suppose not."

"Join me? Much as I would enjoy it, I don't think we can stay in that little man's room much longer. I can only imagine what he's thinking out there, with all the noise." Jean only smiled in response.

It was playful between them in the shower, and they toyed with the feel of soap on each other's bodies, pinching nipples and pressing their bodies together in wet kisses. Steam began to rise from Jean's body, and little puddles of diamond reappeared. Together, their hands found one another's slits, and, standing, they used their hands to pleasure one another, connecting their minds as they had before and bucking together in one, endless, orgasm.

After, leaning against the side of the shower, it occurred to Jean that for the last 12 or so hours she'd lived entirely in this room. She hadn't thought of the investigation, of Weschester, of a team or a mission at all. What she wanted to do now was to simply drag Emma back to the bed so they could fuck again when they recovered.

Emma hadn't the slightest inclination to leave the little bubble they were in either. She knew they'd paid only for the night, and that any moment the little "innkeeper" would start knocking on the door, wondering when his "newlyweds" were going to vacate. She turned the water off, took a towel from the rack nearby and wrapped it around Jean's shoulders, then dried herself off with another. Jean took her hand when she'd finished and walked her back into the bedroom, falling down onto the bed and beckoning Emma to join her. Emma crawled into bed beside Jean and kissed her, languishing in the feel of Jean's mouth, growing wet anew.

*Perhaps we should go tell our host we'll be staying another night…*

With that thought, Jean pulled back. "I… that sounds lovely… but… we can't stay gone that long. People will already be asking questions about my little secret mission." _And I can hardly tell them I was off having my mind blown with endless ultra-orgasms for a week_.

"Just tell them you got distracted by a chesty blonde…"

Jean smiled. "Emma, stop," but Emma just tweaked Jean's nipple. "I'm not sure whether that or the truth would cause more waves."

"Isn't that the truth?"

"Only about why it took so damn long."

All of this talk was silently broaching the hard question that neither of them wanted to consider: what happened when they got back to the mansion, to real life, outside of this little room where no one knew who they were? Emma didn't ask that, and neither did Jean.

The only concession to real life Emma could manage was to say, "Let's go find this second Farmer Joe personality and close this down, then. There are other hotel rooms in the world, and now that I think about it I'd really like to fuck you in a nicer bed than this."

Jean thought on that for a minute. "I daresay I'd like that too." She reached upward and kissed Emma again, distracting for a moment, then pulled away. "Okay, let's do this."

But when they went to put on clothes they realized that what they'd been wearing was badly torn. Emma had only underwear, a pair of skimpy pajama shorts and a little silk tanktop remaining. The corset that had been intended to hold up her breasts was fundamentally disabled by its Phoenix tears. Jean had a bra, a shirt, and pants, but she had no underwear. They held the tattered clothes in their hands, looking at one another, and broke down laughing.

"You think Farmer Joe will suspect we're not friendly if we saunter up to him like this?" Emma joked.

Jean sighed to stop cackling. "Well, I suppose it's not as though we were about to walk around looking like ourselves anyways. Well just have to project the… er… alternate appearance a little more broadly. Emma stuffed the torn clothes into her little bag, and Jean prepared the image of the little newlyweds as they stepped out of the door.

Their host grinned a ridiculous grin at them when he saw them, and they wondered together, silently, what he had thought listening from outside their room.

Emma had goosebumps almost as soon as she stepped outside in her underwear and a strappy little tanktop. It made Jean laugh.

"I suppose I should go diamond for the flight, if you don't mind scanning alone," Emma said.

"That won't be necessary." Jean stepped up to Emma and placed a hand on her waist, pivoting around it, and wrapped her arms around Emma from behind. There was more than enough heat rising off of Jean to make Emma's goosebumps resign. Jean held Emma as she lifted them off the ground. *Well this is just delightful, though I was looking forward to the telekinetic ass-grabbing. Alas.*

Jean smiled in Emma's hair, then reached her hand down and squeezed Emma's ass untelekinetically. Emma giggled.

They found who they were looking for almost immediately. He didn't have a single thought that contradicted the other witness', but he had something more. He was there when they put Xorn in the barn. Or, rather, when Xorn had walked in passively and clasped the restraints around his own wrist.

*Congratulations on your wild suspicions turning out to be totally valid,* Emma said.

*I'm not exactly happy about it. Let's get back to our ride. In the meantime maybe we can try to decide what to do about this.* Jean wrapped her arms around Emma and lifted them both off the ground.


	9. Chapter 9

When they landed, Emma looked upon the Blackbird with surprising regret. _Back to life, back to reality_. She couldn't look at Jean as she climbed in.

For Jean's part, the confirmation that Xorn had been up to something all along was challenge enough, but she barely thought on it because she was so embroiled in what to do about Emma. It hadn't even occurred to her last night that she was committing adultery, but she wasn't sure now whether it should even be called adultery. Hell, she'd known for a while that her marriage with Scott had ceased to be anything more than a piece of paper, though she'd tried her damndest not to admit it. Jean blinked slowly as she stepped up into the plane. Emma was standing in the cabin now, arms crossed, looking to Jean as she entered, the little slither of silk perching on her nipples.

"I don't want to go back," Emma said simply.

Jean considered her for a moment. "You know that we have to." She stepped up to Emma and wrapped her arms around Emma's waist.

"Will you want me at the mansion?" Emma asked, offering her psyche to Jean to look into.

"I can't remember what it's like not to want you. But there will be… difficulties…" and her mind, immersed in Emma's, turned to Scott.

It was the first time Scott had so much as occurred to either of them since they checked into the "hotel," but now Scott occurred to them both. *Oh, Jean… I have to… look _here_.*

Emma exposed the bits of her mind that had lain purposefully dormant since they took off from the mansion. The psychic affair, how it had begun, what it had become. Emma's realization that what she was into in the game was being Jean, worshipping Jean that way. How she couldn't touch Scott, even mentally, since the day of Jean's press conference. Emma's dreams turning to Jean, over and over again, in the weeks that followed their first kiss. The utter absence of any desire in Emma to touch Scott again. And, finally, what Emma felt for Jean, which had already been exposed a time or two.

Emma watched Jean's eyes pass from surprise to rage, with commensurate flames, then watched as the flames subsided and Jean's expression cooled. Jean sat down on the bench against the wall of the cabin, trying to sort through her thoughts, looking for her thoughts, really, under the myriad layers of confusion.

First, Jean was surprised Scott had it in him. And there was rage... but… a curious rage. The waves of rage came when she saw the memories of Scott touching Emma, Emma when she didn't look like Jean. Jean would have expected to be jealous of anyone who'd slept with Scott. She did not expect to feel more jealous of Scott getting to touch Emma before she had.

"I'm so sorry, and, he won't. Not ever again," Emma pled.

"Now I'm afraid I don't want to go back."

Emma dropped to her knees in front of Jean, letting her head fall into Jean's lap, leaving her mind wide open to Jean but not daring to explore inside of Jean's head herself. Jean didn't react for several minutes. She let her head fall against the side wall of the cabin and closed her eyes.

This was new, certainly. Whatever this was with Emma, though, new or not, it was more intense than anything she'd felt in her life. She had no idea how to explain it to anyone, even herself, except it was clear that she wanted Emma desperately, even now. It was clear she would still want Emma even when other people were around to notice. She reached her hand down and stroked Emma's hair. Emma lifted her face, and Emma's eyes were wet with timid tears.

"I don't know what to do," Jean said simply.

"Jean… punish me… anything… just don't go away."

Jean raised her eyebrow. The flames kicked up in her eyes, and she reached into Emma's mind and turned Emma all the way diamond, kicking herself out of Emma's head. A look of surprise swept over Emma, though she'd felt Jean's desire, still strong, when their minds touched. But, before Emma could look surprised for long, Jean had lifted her up and thrown Emma onto her back against the floor of the cabin. Emma released the diamond after she landed, meaning to succumb.

Jean threw herself with shocking grace onto Emma, dropping in to kiss Emma's newly-soft form. But her kisses were not gentle. She pushed her tongue intensely into Emma, who plied with pleasure at Jean's touch, filling with relief.

It was clear that Jean was in control now. She pinned Emma's arms above her head telekinetically. She slid the clothes off of Emma seamlessly, not touching them, tossing them along the side of the cabin, panties and all.

*You're mine now.*

Jean took Emma's tits in her hands, squeezing them almost violently. She kept Emma pinned to the floor, helpless, and watched as Emma's body seized with pleasure as Jean touched her, Jean highly amused. She bit on Emma's nipples like they were chocolates, seizing a piece of each with her teeth and sucking the nuggets right down her throat.

*All yours, darling. Whatever you want.*

Jean slid her mouth down to Emma's clit, reveling in the swell of it, wrapping her lips around it, sliding it under her tongue. Emma was hers – she held Emma's clit softly between her teeth – and she knew the White Queen would not move without her command. It made her eyes light with a fire to consume the universe.

Jean pushed herself up onto her hands. She forced Emma's legs apart with her own and dropped her hips almost to the floor. She felt the blood rush to her sex, hot with urgency. She pushed forward along her arms until she felt herself contact with Emma. She opened her mind and nuzzled at Emma's. Emma let go.

Jean sank her clit into Emma's, feeling her way through Emma's exposed mind. The abundant wetness on each of them mingled, leaving only the sensation of heat and softness and indulgence simmering between them, shared, one. Jean bucked against Emma, again and again, feeling a rush of arousal with every thrust, feeling herself swell with the resistant pliability of Emma's pussy. She leaned down to Emma's lips and took them in her mouth.

Jean kept herself cool… well, cool-ish, for her. She let her right hand lift to grasp Emma's breast as she slid against her. She felt Emma's inundation through their connection, the overwhelming rush of pleasure as Emma felt Jean's sex mold onto hers. Jean kept at it, driving Emma mad there on the torment of the edge.

When Jean thought Emma looked sufficiently as though she'd explode any moment, Jean said *Come.*

Emma exploded with orgasm, and Jean felt every inch of its crawling gratification, two fold, four fold, sixteen fold. Like a room full of mirrors facing each other. They tingled with abandon from the tips of their fingers to the folds of their slits to the tips of their toes and back.

When at last they loosened themselves from one another, their bodies fell with exhaustion together. Emma exhaled heavily as she laid her fingertip atop the round of Jean's ass and sank her neck backward onto the hard floor.

Minutes passed in silence as Jean nuzzled to lay her head down on Emma's breasts and went still. Their minds swam together in postcoital pleasure.

It was Emma, still warm with submissive, *will this continue if we go back?*

It was bare, direct. Emma felt very wholly at that moment that she would do absolutely anything Jean told her to do.

Jean thought *if?* and _it has to_, which Emma felt at once. Emma rolled onto her side and wrapped her arm farther around Jean.

*_What_ will people say?"

"What would they not?" Jean laughed.

"Poor Scott," Emma said.

"Yeah," Jean replied, "it's not his fault he can't amplify orgasms."

"Is that all it is?" It was sort of meant to be a thought, but she was weary just now and there wasn't much distinction between what she said and what she thought for Jean to hear.

"No," Jean answered.

"Good, because it's the best drug I ever had. Are you sure we have to go back?"

"If I do that again I won't be able to stay awake long enough to fly us back."

Emma grinned in response. "It is delicious, isn't it?"

"Unnervingly so."

"Mmm." Where _had_ this come from? But Emma had to admit to herself that she'd always gotten off on bickering with Jean, right from the start.

"Same," Jean said in response to the thought. Emma reached up and kissed Jean, softly, savoring her lips.

"How do you suppose we go about explaining?" Emma asked.

"Explaining what?"

"Well… I don't know exactly… but at least we'd have to explain a bit why the White Queen has no clothes, no?"

Jean pictured Emma strolling out of the plane in her pussy-drenched little white panties and that scrap of silk, and she smiled with mischief.

Thanks for reading! (Sorry for the multiple posting as I figure out the chapter system here so I can write more...)

If you liked this, review and I'll write more, or, even better, check out my novel No Church in the Wild by Bacchus Paine (Kindle and Amazon), which contains some racier sex and a character shout out to Jean Grey…but generally is a femslash sort of novel set amongst the insane happenings of San Francisco's festivals and the Castro, in which a bi female and some gay men seek to seduce folks who might be on their way out of the closet but find themselves distracted by their own game...


	10. Chapter 10

Hank was standing with a curious look on his face, waiting, when Emma and Jean stepped out of the Blackbird, Emma wrapped in one of the camping pack blankets stashed under the shelf of the cabin where they'd fucked not two hours earlier. Jean decided not to speak first, but she wasn't sure why.

When the pair of them were six feet away from Hank, he finally said, "And, Jean, hello, how was your trip?"

"Enlightening," Jean replied.

Hank looked over at Emma, who held a blanket around her shoulders. "Er… is everything alright?"

"Everything's fine, Hank. For now anyway," Jean said, "We're going to – I mean, I need to shower and change and then I want to meet you in the lab. Emma should come too. So give us half an hour, and meet us there?" Emma didn't realize she was biting her lip.

"Scott was very interested in your coordinates last night. He didn't seem to know where you'd gone, either."

"I'll explain in the lab, but Scott is going to have to wait."

"Well, by all means, shower away!" If Henry McCoy didn't know better he'd swear either Jean or Emma was in some kind of heat. He was utterly distracted by the smell of female sex that seemed to waft off of them.

Jean stepped away and Emma followed her out of the door of the hangar and up towards the elevator. When the elevator doors shut around them, Emma finally spoke, hoarse: "So you're going to explain why I'm mostly naked to Hank in his lab?"

"Hell no, honey." She smirked. "You think we have to explain to anyone in this house why you're mostly naked any given day?"

Emma pinched Jean's side and said *****bitch*, but she couldn't help chuckling. "Seriously, I thought you wanted to keep this Xorn business away from prying ears. So who exactly did we battle to lose my clothes?"

"You didn't lose your clothes in a battle," Jean said as the elevator doors opened. *Just shower and rinse the pussy off your face. I'll make sure Hank's curiosity about that is abandoned in the lab.*

*Crafty,* Emma replied. She stopped and looked at Jean. *You coming?"*

*Mm, I'd like to, but I don't think that would solve our 'reeking of sex' problem. And I need to think about how to present this to Scott.*

*I suppose that's true. On both counts.* Emma looked lasciviously at Jean for a moment, then turned and headed for her room.

...

Thanks for reading!

If you liked this, please review/follow and I'll write more, or, even better, check out my novel _No Church in the Wild_ by Bacchus Paine (Kindle or on Amazon, iBookstore Feb 1), which contains some racier sex and a character shout out to Jean Grey…read the first chapter with explanations free at /Bacchus-paine-no-church-in-the-wild-lyrics


	11. Chapter 11

Hank was staring at genetic scans of some of the students, Quinton Quire among them, when Jean walked into his lab, fresh and clean, hair still damp, pussy smell gone. He crossed his arms as she approached. "Okay, you appear to have grown cleaner. Can you tell me why you took our bird out last night now, really?"

*ETA?* Jean called out to Emma as she responded to Hank verbally: "Of course I will…"

*A corner away,* Emma replied.

"Emma should be here soon as well. I took her because I needed another telepath and she's the best we've got—"

"I was rather curious about why you'd enlist the services of someone you so despise on an all-night journey, mano-e-mano..."

"She was the best for the job. That's all."

Emma took that opportunity to appear at the door to the lab. "Best _looking_," she added. Jean clenched her teeth so she wouldn't crack a smile. *Naked,* she added, looking down and past her shoulder to watch Emma approach. She'd chosen the X-only top, that bitch. _How distracting_, Jean thought to herself, _especially knowing so well what's underneath it_.

*No, darling, that would be you. You're all natural, after all,* and Emma sent along the feeling of arousal from the day before when she looked at Jean's naked form for the first time.

Hank's voice jerked them both back to the present: "Jean? You were saying? You needed to go away without anyone knowing where becauuuuussse?"

"Because a mutant escaped from a prison in China recently."

"A dangerous mutant? Ill-meaning? A mutant who stole your thunder in some way? Why do we care about this mutant?"

"I care about him because there's something about his psonic signature that… reminds me of someone. Someone I haven't felt since… well, since about the time Emma joined us." They both looked back at Emma, who stood with her arms crossed and her eyes on Jean's ass. When she heard her name, she looked up at them. "What?" she asked, stepping forward. "She never said the signature was similar to mine."

"No, and I don't mean to imply it," Jean said. "Just… let's say it's unsettlingly familiar and I don't know why. So, I wanted to see if I could figure out where this guy was coming from. I get the feeling that he's going to become more embroiled in our lives very soon, and I want to know why he was imprisoned – too see if that implicated some clue about his nature."

Hank's machinery whizzed and beeped as it went along its merry way, but for a while he said nothing.

"And did it?" he finally asked.

"Look, at this point I don't know who he's working with and where he's listening, or really even if I need to be worried about that. But the psonic signature is so familiar it feels to me like he's been _inside_ this house. I'm not sure when, because he was supposedly imprisoned in China for years and years."

"For the record," Emma said, "I didn't pick up on any of this on my own. This was all her. I'm not sure what I'm doing here now besides making the lab just a touch more fashionable."

Hank looked back at Jean. "So, you don't know quite who to trust?" And now his puzzled gaze was fixed on Emma, his eyes practically screaming "and you chose to trust _her_?"

"No, I don't. Which is way I asked to borrow the bird with no questions asked, and why Scott doesn't know where I was." _Scott, Scott_, Jean thought. _He's lingering nearby… and he's purposefully shielding his thoughts from me…_

"Surely, Jean, you don't mistrust Scott in this?"

Jean bowed her head. "It's not that, exactly… I …"

All three of their heads turned to the door as a fourth voice interrupted them: "Certainly you're not contemplating whether or not you trust me right now, my dear wife?" Scott asked, making Herculean efforts not to look at Emma. "Because I'd really like to know where you've been."

…

Thanks for reading!

If you liked this, please review and I'll keep going (please forgive the snails pace, as I'm on tour), or, even better, check out my novel _No Church in the Wild_ by Bacchus Paine (Kindle or on , iBookstore late Feb), which contains some racier sex and a character shout out to Jean Grey… free preview of the first chapter with explanations on .


	12. Chapter 12

Hank hastily excused himself, not bothering to make up any explanation for his departure, just muttering "thanks for the update" as he squirrelled out of the room. Jean couldn't stop herself from glancing at Emma before she recovered and turned her attention to Scott.

"It was a long night, and I'll tell you about it, or at least I'll tell you what I know about it. There's no mistrust." Jean walked passed Emma without looking at her, taking Scott's arm in her hand to lead him out of the lab. Scott's gaze dragged behind Jean's pull, falling on Emma, who dropped her eyes to the floor, before he was pulled out of the room entirely.

"What the fuck is going on, Jean?" he asked, still feeling a bit of telekinetic pull away from the lab… and from Emma.

"Truthfully, I'm not totally sure. Something is brewing. I have reason to believe it has to do with someone who has some sort of telepathic capacity, but I don't know how much telepathic capacity. I also don't know how far he is from us, or whether he's privy to the contents of X-men's heads. I'm not 100 percent sure he's a telepath at all. So, I went to look for more information with Emma, because she can shield her thoughts from him if he is a telepath. And I can't really talk about what I found with anyone here, other than to say that something is indeed brewing, not because I don't trust you, but because I don't know whether you'd even know to hide it from the wrong person if you saw him. And because I think it should stay hidden until I understand it."

Scott stopped, which required significant effort, and pulled his arm from within Jean's grip to turn her to face him. He thought he could see something, a flash, a light, something slinking within Jean's pupils, but he couldn't be sure. He forced himself to focus on it so that he wouldn't think about Emma.

Jean, naturally, could feel him trying not to think about Emma. She felt a spark of anger flutter in her breast, and decided she had to get away. She dropped Scott's arm. "I have work to do, Scott. I'm sorry to leave you in the dark, but I need to go."

"Go where?" he asked.

*Yes, where?* Emma called from the spot where she stood reading Scott's vision of the conversation. *I got all dressed up…*

"I'll be in Ororo's greenhouse," she told them both. "I could use some space, Scott, please."

The expression that fell upon Scott's face in reply was one of fundamental confusion, the sort of baffled face one might wear while looking upon aliens for the very first time. "Alright, Jean," he said.

Jean felt Emma take off through the house and toward the grounds, so she walked circuitous route to make her way toward the greenhouse. Emma was waiting inside, fingering some lilies with an absentminded, dreamy look on her face, the smell of too many varieties of flowers that would have generally left her feeling miffed somehow enjoyable today…

"That sounded pleasant," she said to Jean wen she entered.

"I don't think there's much that's pleasant remaining there. But, I'll confess, I have no idea what to say to him."

"You mean 'I decided I'd rather fuck Emma than you' won't do the trick?" Emma asked, tweaking Jean's nipple through her shirt.

"Be serious for a second, Emma, please. Its not as though anyone else could really understand what it is with us. I doubt two female telepaths have fallen for each other in the history of mutantkind."

"Oh, don't be so grandiose, Jean."

"Sorry, did you know a couple of telepaths who could advise us on this situation?"

"None like you."

Jean sighed. "If we tell him, there's going to be drama. Awful, loud, vulgar, cursing drama. And, you know the worst part? I don't know whether he'll be more angry that I cheated or that I cheated with you."

"Why not just mute the drama, then?"

"What?"

"Darling, you are one of the most powerful mutants I've ever met. Your little diamond-touch trick… you're defying multiple laws of physics and telepathy and genetics when you do that. If you really let loose, the energy could cause all of Manhattan to black out. It would be nothing for you to just smooth over Scott's anger a bit in favor of acceptance…"

Jean stared at Emma, her eyes hard, her pupils growing brighter as a glow lifted off her shoulders. "You're not seriously asking that I alter my husband's memories of his own emotions?"

"I'm not asking. I'm saying you _could_, as one possible solution."

Jean clenched her teeth, reeling. Suddenly she realized that it had been just a day, really, of this thing with Emma. A day on top of over a decade of strife, a much longer history where Emma was an enemy. Whatever had been stripped away in their time together, Jean had been sure she saw a benevolent Emma standing naked before her, loving her even. But this was not something that anyone who knew her would dare to suggest. This was not something someone with any scruples whatsoever would consider. It was an evil solution, and she couldn't see the Emma she'd been with in China through it.

From Emma's spot behind the lilies, all she could hear was the brisk slam of Jean's mind closing off her own. "Jean, what? I was only saying—"

"—that I should brainwash my husband?! Yeah, I got that. I need to go." Jean moved without her feet toward the door, lightning fast.

"Jean, wait!"

But, the door was swinging shut behind her, and Emma was left standing in the glass house, holding a stone, all alone.


	13. Chapter 13

[Picking up at the events of New X-Men 119-120]

Jean missed Emma when she woke up in the morning three days later, as she had for the previous two days. She put the thought out of her mind, or tried. Emma crept back in. Jean didn't understand her own blowup, exactly. It wasn't unlike Emma to suggest something like a brain wipe on a close friend. She was the fucking white queen, for God's sake. But, back in her room, alone, Jean had started to feel like it was the right thing. Maybe they were too different to be permanent. Maybe Jean was afraid Phoenix and Emma were just a little too alike. Maybe Hank's injury distracted her, or maybe Barnell, all of it with Barnell. She got distracted.

Either way, when Emma and Scott went to find the U-Men leader, torn as Jean had been about the turn of events, she'd had no choice but to keep her mind separated from Emma's and had just told her, scathingly, not to go around killing anyone. Still, she thought about Emma's sex nudged against hers. But, by the third day, she'd started to feel ill. While Emma was bleeding out of town, her flaw exposed, Jean was growing sicklier by the minute. When Emma woke up, Jean was blasting a squad of U-Men away.

The fire only Emma had seen before was now plain for all to absorb.

And then, there was Cassandra Nova.

Jean was waiting at the hanger for Scott and Emma when they returned, Emma having dropped the U-Mastermind out of a window and not at all upset about it. Her nose still hurt. Jean expected to tell them the news about Cassandra in person, as soon as she could. But when she saw Emma's broken face, she rushed forward, taking Emma's cheek in her hand and cooing, "what happened?!"

Scott's face twisted with confusion. As Emma sent a summary of the day's events into Jean's mind, Jean realized Scott was standing there, staring at them like he just saw a yeti playing baseball. Jean stepped back, withdrawing her hand.

"I told her what happened," Emma said to Scott. She looked back at Jean, trying to turn her head so Scott couldn't see the longing plastered all over her face, the said to Jean, "I'm going to go to the clinic, if you don't mind."*


	14. Chapter 14

[Around and through New X-Men 121, which obviously Marvel own all right s to]

Jean's mind was still closed to Emma, though she had, she thought, forgotten why, and in any event she hadn't said a word to Scott about what had happened between them, nor said a word to him about knowing he had been engaged in a psychic affair with Emma, when she found herself walking the door to Cassandra's clinic room. Something about Emma standing there, half-naked, hair pulled tight, lit a little fire inside Jean, who decided to peck Scott on the cheek while she looked side-eyed at Emma in an attempt to put it out. There was work to do. She'd been a separatist for this long, may as well keep up the act.

Emma was furious. Furious for the peck, and the silence, and the closed mind she encountered when she reached for Jean, though she'd try to make sure Jean didn't realize she was reaching. They stepped inside together, both of them feeling the proximity of the other, since it was the closest they'd stood since Jean reached out a hand to touch Emma's bloody cheek. Emma though she could feel Jean's breath on her shoulder, and it made her think of the feeling she'd had when she felt the heat of Jean's breath all over her body.

Jean went to Cassandra immediately, and Emma watched her kneel beside the table that held Cassandra's body. _I need a drink for this_, Emma thought. Then Jean watched Emma's neck stretch out as she took a swig, remembering the way it felt when Jean sucked it softly against the inside of her lips.

When their heads leaned close together above Cassandra's body, Emma's fingers reached outward across the neck and nearly grazed Jean's before they both found themselves swallowed into Cassandra's mindscape.

When they appeared in the odd place, sagging gray face beside them, island before them, Jean reached without thinking to Emma's mind, and she found that it welcomed her.

*Is it just me here?* Jean asked.

*No, I'm here,* Emma answered. *What the fuck is this place? Why the face?* Emma watched Jean reach for the melting grey skin, watching the cheeks of Jean's ass flex and feeling herself get just slightly wet, but she felt an itch that this wasn't a place to be daydreaming. Then she saw the grin. *This is not a friendly place!* she called to Jean.

*What's that on the Island. We need to check out that Island.* As Jean walked away, Emma noticed the second huge grey visage watching her. *There are at least two of these! Don't you feel this hostility!*

Emma watched Jean walk away, sixteen steps of Jean's bountiful bottom bouncing tightly side to side, before the beam burst at her, but she was diamond in an instant. She thought to inform Jean, who already knew. Emma ripped the grey inner face that was Cassandra apart with diamond fingertips as Jean began her walk on air.

Emma looked up to find Jean following a bridge she built for Emma to follow as she went, and, in that moment, Emma felt proud to have touched her. Then she was pissed. She, Emma Frost, was bitter about wanting Jean Grey, so ravenously. _Where are _you_ then, Jean? Why won't you even look at me for what seems like nothing! Can you really live without what we felt?_ _I don't want to hurt Scott, fuck you! _She stuck out her tongue in a moment of petulant rage.

Jean lost her concentration and fell into the muck, her bridge rising up from above her to chase her down.

Emma froze, petrified that somehow she had hurt Jean, and then she started to run to the shore, desperate, before she was stopped by a burst of chunky green goo, but it was less than a moment before Jean was floating up out of the water anyway, walking into a room with a giant brain, while Emma struggled to free herself from her sticky prison. _This life_, Jean thought passively, as she began her journey to Charles Xavier's womb.

As she emerged, having freed him, she thought, she had her own moment of petulance, spelling out "Hello Emma thanks for the help" in the green goo that pegged Emma to the same spot it had since Jean was in the water. Emma blushed.

It was true that Jean had said, "We should talk" to the whole group, after, but Emma heard something different. They'd said, hadn't they, that the thing between them couldn't stop? Jean looked at her from behind that gooey insult with desire, she felt it.

After they debriefed, Emma asked, "Jean, a word?" Hank and Scott took that as their cue to depart.


	15. Chapter 15

"Enough, already," Emma said as the door closed behind Scott, turning to face Jean. "Be indignant at my inhumanity over a passive suggestion that you do an iddy biddy mental tweak on Scott. I don't want you to hurt Scott. But why have you put up a wall? Why did you take it away?" Emma stepped toward Jean, placing her fingers lightly along the warmth of Jean's hip, looking up at Jean's softened face. She couldn't fathom why Jean would shut off the luscious connection between them.

The proximity melted Jean, and a Phoenix purr escaped her lips, a puff of psionic flame, as she leaned into Emma's mouth and blew off the wall from her mind as her lips passed over and through Emma's. She pulled away suddenly, ashamed at her voraciousness, but Emma wrapped her other hand around Jean's back. *Don't be ashamed,* Emma thought to Jean, a caress in it.

*We really haven't thought this through.*

*No,* Emma replied, *but I'm not asking you anything now other than to kiss me. There's nothing to think through, now.*

Then she lunged for Jean's lips again, taking them each in her own, in turn, and she pressed her cunt up against Jean's through the leather. It was no time at all before Jean had thrown Emma onto the table behind them, knocking off several electronics in little flashes of diamond. That far into Emma's head, far enough to turn on the diamond, Jean could see the lack of malice in Emma's dismissal of Scott, the oversight a result of Emma's consumption by thoughts of Phoenix rising.

She ground her hips into Emma against the table.

It was Jean who stood up, finally, wet with the heat of Emma's kiss, to remove their clothes, and she locked the door behind them as she did. It had been weeks, such a long time, since either of them had connected so deeply, and they found reciprocal hunger in each other's thoughts.

Jean threw her face into Emma's cunt, sucking her, thrashing her tongue into and over Emma's throbbing swell, Jean growing so hot with the ravenous hunger of the task that she moved the spreading diamond of Emma's body pointedly with the fire of force that whipped off her tongue.

The orgasm shook Emma to the fleshy core, and, as she pulsed with it, Jean's legs quivered in mirrored bliss, on and on, Jean feeling Emma's ecstasy through their mental connection, until Jean collapsed onto Emma's leg and they were both breathing heavily against the mahogany, their forms slack, their energy wholly depleted.

Emma regained a sort of consciousness first, sitting up, then sliding down onto the floor to intertwine with Jean.

*Oh, that,* Jean joked.

*That,* Emma replied.

There was almost no need to talk between them when they were connected like this, they swam inside one another's minds, and Emma leaned in again to kiss Jean, gently now, slowly.


	16. Chapter 16

When they'd stopped the kiss and leaned back against the desk, their clothes hanging loosely around the wrong parts of their bodies, Jean dropped her head against the panel and spoke, finally.

"You know what I just did?"

"What, darling?"

"I just pulled _the professor_ out of Cassandra Nova's body."

The reality of their trip through Cassandra's head had only recently dawned on Emma, when she was readmitted to Jean's mind. "So the island…?"

"Was where his consciousness was imprisoned, yes."

"Holy shit."

"Yeah."

Emma ran her fingernail lightly along Jean's arm. "Just another day at the office."

Jean let out a small, ironic chuckle. "Yeah, I guess we all die, or nearly do, on a fairly regular basis." Now Emma laughed too, and they leaned into each other gently in their giggles.

When the laughter died out, Jean said, "Emma…this…what is this, this thing with us?"

Emma let her head fall back against the panel now. "Glorious."

"But not right. I'm cheating."

"Forgive me, darling, but nothing about this feels wrong to me. Cheating is… well in some way it's a state of mind, but sometimes sex is just sex and there's nothing more in it. Sometimes it's scratching an itch, really. And sometimes it's something else entirely, apparently. Sometimes it's not betrayal. But, _this_ sex we're having… well, I'll be very happy to have it for an infinite period of time. I couldn't give less of a fuck if you're married to Scott."

Jean closed her eyes. "I don't think I can be that woman. Not here. In China, I'm…I'm just a woman, maybe a lonely one. Here, I'm supposed to be some kind of paradigm—"

"You are a paradigm. That's part of what I love about you—" Emma stopped short as she realized it was the first time she'd said it aloud, though Jean had seen it before, and Emma knew both that she had seen it before and that Jean felt the same. Jean kissed her cheek.

"What's coming isn't going to be easy, you know," Jean said. "We could be facing the entire Shi'ar fleet is Cassandra is strong enough to really bend them to her will. I don't know how Hank could possibly revive the professor, and, just as we feared, there's a psychic mastermind out there who's already rowed us up a shit creek before taking off in her spaceship. Literally."

"That bitch," Emma replied. Jean couldn't help but laugh.

"The problem is, Emma, it's not exactly the time to be tearing down people's paradigms. And I can feel their concern over the phoenix raptor. All the time. They already think something's off with me."

Emma chewed on that for a moment, knowing just how right Jean really was in that with that raptor spreading out behind her. "Meaning, what?" she finally asked, growing mildly desperate, "that you can't do this?"

"I can't, no, but I also can't not. I don't know what that means."

"Allow me to offer a proposal?"

"Go for it."

"Well, first, tell me something?"

"Okay…" Jean said.

"Do you want me, really? Do you want this?"

"Desperately."

"Alright, then. Let's leave the paradigm intact, at least for now. Between us we have pretty much all the telepathy left in this place, given the state the professor is in, and we don't have to go into anyone's mind to offer suggestions there to cover us, if need be. We can find moments together, when there isn't work to be done or a picture frame to keep intact, or what have you. For now, at least. Who knows, maybe there will soon come a lull in the action that will provide our colleagues the opportunity to digest this."

"Given our history, I fear that is overly optimistic…"

"Maybe, Jean. But I can't give this up either, not willingly, not while you're breathing. This is a kind of magic, you know?"

"I know. Honestly, I don't think I _can_ stop. I just wasn't prepared for how poorly it fits into our everyday lives. And, Scott…" Jean sighed.

"So, we'll just have to figure that out." Emma leaned over and took Jean's face in her hands, then kissed her, trailed the kisses down her neck, over her shoulder, down to her breast, and they stole a last few minutes on the floor of the office before they walked out in opposite directions from the room.


	17. Chapter 17

They'd walked out of the office that day separately, each smoothing their wrinkled clothes in turn, such that anyone paying attention to their respective departures would have certainly known a tryst was afoot inside.

Then, they spoke only psychically, but they rarely really parted. When Emma saw a student fumbling with some mansion technology in an amusing way, she recounted it to Jean, and they laughed together. When Jean told Scott, later that day, that she was going to sleep in a guest room for a little while to clear her head, she let Emma watch through her eyes. The only thing Emma withheld from Jean, at least as far as details were concerned, were those occasional instances in the days that followed when Scott reached out to her from his loneliness for comfort. Emma made excuses, though she felt badly for him, and this pity Jean knew about, too.

Still, if they passed in the halls they were careful not to really look at one another.

That is, until night came. Once the students had all gone to sleep and the halls had emptied, Jean wrapped herself in a robe and walked to Emma's room. She didn't knock; Emma knew when she was standing there and promptly appeared, naked, at the doorway to admit Jean.

By the end of their days of clandestine communication, they were hungry for one another, and once Jean crossed the threshold into Emma's room she reached out to take Emma's hand, and then her waist, and then her mouth, and they fell together again, the heat rising between them, flames in Jean's eyes, little puddles of diamond spreading across Emma's legs, her breasts, her belly, her sex, puddles splashing wildly in a thunderstorm of lust.

That first night, when Jean moved to wrap her tongue around Emma's sex, Emma emitted an involuntary moan of delight, a loud moan and a clearly sexual one, and Jean had pulled back.

"Careful, Ms. Frost," she said, "we don't want to wake the children. Shall I silence you?"

"Will it hurt?" Emma asked. "At least, will it hurt in a good way?"

Jean giggled. "It won't hurt. I'll do myself too," and she showed Emma the psychic trick she had in mind, detaching the brain from the vocal cords temporarily, and Emma smiled.

*Go ahead,* Emma replied. Jean reached inside of their minds then and blocked the involuntary response that made the vocal cords turn thoughts of sounds audible, so that when one of them moaned, grunted, cried out, purred, they heard it through the mental connection and not through their eardrums. But, their throats still vibrated with pleasure, and a symphony of ecstatic sounds passed over their mental bond as they deepened kisses, as they caressed, as they fucked with abandon and the flames rose off of Jean's back with her ecstasy.

In the mornings, before dawn, Jean would wake, turn back on their vocal cords, lay a light kiss on Emma's sleeping shoulder that woke her, and then kiss goodbye before slinking back the hall to her own room.

This practice wasn't devoid of guilt, but the guilt never seemed present when they were holding one another. The guilt came in the daylight, with the more voluntarily silence they employed in the sunlight, but when their skin touched there seemed nothing else in the world.

No, the guilt came when Jean saw Scott, or even Hank, when the secrecy of what she and Emma were doing at night was so painfully highlighted by others' obvious lack of understanding. For Emma, it manifested as a petulant annoyance that she could not reach out and hold Jean every time she saw her. But Jean just felt like she wasn't living up to her, what? Reputation?

On the third day, Scott found Jean in the lab with the Professor. He took her shoulders in his hands and asked her to just move back in. It was easy enough for Jean to refuse him in light of the lack of sincerity she heard in his plea, even if she hadn't felt totally addicted to the nights she had now.

But, that evening, after Jean and Emma had buried their faces in one another's sex, writing against each other, and then collapsed in exhaustion when their parade of orgasms had ended, Jean turned in the bed and looked at Emma.

*Has Scott come to you since… since we went into Cassandra's head?"* she asked.

*Yes,* Emma confessed.

*What did you say?*

*I said no.*

*Just "no"?*

*Just "no," darling, though I confess it can't stay as simple as "no" forever. Then again, I guess it can't stay that simple for you, either. Not forever.*

*No, it can't,* Jean acknowledged. Then she curled her arms around Emma and they both lingered together on the thought for a moment, though they didn't resolve it before they fell asleep.


	18. Chapter 18

"There was a bit of a scuffle on Logan's training run this afternoon," Jean said to Emma, tucked beside her in bed as they both rested. This night had ended, like the several nights before it, with Jean's appearance at Emma's door and their falling madly into one another, heating, fucking with abandon to the point of exhaustion. Neither of them had tired of the habit in the slightest.

A couple of days earlier, they had adopted this practice of talking like non-telepaths about the day for a flash as they fell asleep, once their voices were back on. Their ongoing connection shared much, but each of them had to go about their days without the distraction of constantly listening to the other. At night, now, holding one another, they caught up on the notable details.

"Hmm?" Emma prompted sleepily.

"Some scrapes and bruises, nothing major. They're whining together about how he was too rough."

Emma giggled, "Did they not sign up to go out training with Logan?"

"You have to admit, he's much more thrilling in theory than in practice. In practice, he's just terrifying… brute force…"

Emma sat up on her elbow and faced Jean. "Is that a note of libido I hear in your voice darling?" Her face was hard as she spoke, but it softened into a smile shortly thereafter.

"He's… I do find Logan's rawness attractive, I can admit that."

Emma tried not to be jealous, and Jean felt it. "Ooh Frost, don't you worry. There's nothing so raw as this." Jean cuddled up into Emma's neck, and that made Emma smile anew. She pulled away a bit and whispered, "plus I can't get such a glorious view of Logan's body from a point of public observation any old time of day the way I can when I'm with you."

Emma pinched Jean's nipple in response.

"Speaking of which," Jean said, now lifting herself up to speak from a pout at the tip of Emma's lips, "I was wondering if you'd do me a favor?"

Emma threw her a "fucking duh" sort of look.

"Will you announce the new curriculum plans tomorrow? I need to spend a little time organizing Charles' notes on the new system to get it going, and you're rather good at presenting things bluntly. Take it off my plate?"

"Certainly, darling."

"Thank you." Jean kissed Emma one last time and nuzzled back into her neck to sleep, sniffling slightly with her nagging cold as she did.

[New X-Men #122 begins]

Meanwhile, Cassandra had sabotaged the Shiar, which Jean couldn't say was unexpected. She only regretted there had been no way to warn them.

The next morning, on Earth, Emma spoke.

She stood up in front of the student body and explained calmly how they were moving to the "emergency preparedness" curriculum without suggesting there was any emergency. To make Jean laugh (albeit later), she threw in a word to snub the complaints about Logan.

In her office, Jean floated cross-legged above the corner of her desk, laptop and papers floating around her. She'd assumed this position rather passively, as she worked, rising off her seat with the elevation of her mental activity. She heard Scott enter before she felt him, though – an ominous sign.

Ah, so Logan had told him about the raptor manifestation. He was concerned. Was she?

_If only I could answer honestly_, Jean thought: _I'm not concerned at all, Scott, because I feel more alive than I've felt in ages. I know the danger we face and the parts of it the rest of you don't even suspect yet and I feel utterly steeled against it by the knowledge that there is something so alive to be had in this world. That I am willed to survive by whatever means necessary out of the mere addiction of tasting her again_.

But she said (quoted from original): "Do I LOOK like I'm losing control? These are different times, Scott. Everything is different. Charles is right, we can't afford to be ashamed anymore. We can't strap down our wings or hide our strange eyes or our brilliant minds…"

Scott heard someone else talking then, someone he thought he knew very well. What a mindfuck, for Jean to remind him of Emma. Emma, and the unbridled sex she's given him and, apparently, taken away.

Now, he argued with Jean heatedly about the X-Men's newfound self-publicity. They shouldn't start acting all master-race, he was saying, and it offended her. Her eyes hardened and her voice deepened and she shot a dig at Scott about the professor, suggesting he didn't care. It was ugly.

As she walked down the hall, she reached out for Emma: *I need to clear my head. Do you have five minutes?*

*I have fifteen,* Emma replied. *No one's travelling today – meet me in the hanger?*

*See you there.*

Emma opened the cabin door to the Blackbird and stepped inside, inhaling in the hopes of smelling the sex they'd had there weeks before. She sat for a moment before Jean entered and pressed sufficient buttons to close the cabin of the plane off from the mansion.

"I had a fight with Scott," Jean said simply, but she relayed the memory to Emma as she spoke.

"Well, darling, not to worry," Emma began, taking Jean in her hands and then reaching up to stroke her hair, "you're right – desperate times. We can't do this any other way. But you know I think that."

"Yes, I know."

"Sometimes I really do want to run away. Spend the next five years coming constantly on a beach with a hot blonde." Jean pictured it for a moment, some sort of bungalow over the water with curious steam rising beneath it.

"But that's not you," Emma replied.

"No," Jean said.

"How long can we keep this up? With Scott? He's reaching out to me, too."

"I don't know. And I don't know how long I can handle this two tracks situation, not bothering to pretend to be unhappily married to Scott, though I do love him, and feeling so alive with you, in love like I've never been."

"It is certainly not easy, the guilt, the sneaking around. But we knew it wouldn't be."

"True. We did. But it is good." And Jean leaned into Emma, taking Emma's lips between her own, savoring the warmth of the contact. Emma placed on hand on Jean's cheek and her other along the side of Jean's breast, and she rubbed Jean's nipple with her thumb, sending a little shot of arousal into Jean's sex. The sensation drew Jean's eyes down, and when she looked up at Emma again there was fire in her pupils.

Emma smiled mischievously. "Afternoon delight?"

The smile that spread across Jean's face was answer enough, and Emma took her in a kiss, pawing ravenously at Jean's form, as she felt Jean lift them off of the ground.

"No need for the cold hanger floor this time," she said.

Jean peeled Emma's cape off first, just let it fall to the floor. But she unwound the zipper of Emma's white leather collar with her hands, carefully, until it was released and she could slide the reminder of Emma's strappings off and onto the floor.

"You too," Emma pleaded. So, in one fell swoop Jean peeled the black leather jumpsuit and the undergarments she wore off, and they floated there naked together again, their legs beginning to wrap around one another, electricity rising from the touch.

They kissed again, and now the heat between them rose in that exotic but familiar way, the tempo of their playful thrusts against one another quickening, and Jean stretched their legs apart, gently, until their dripping sexes were pressed together and they writhed against one another again in mirrored bliss. Emma flushed diamond and felt the spread of crystal across her back as Jean's hands squeezed her ass to pin their bodies together. Emma bucked with the waves of ecstasy, building into the pliable slick that met the thrust of her clit, and when they began the torrent of orgasm that froze their bodies with pleasure, Jean moved them gently together with her mind to draw out the frenzy between them.

When they had exhausted themselves and rested against each other's bodies suspended in air, Emma laughed and said, "Maybe we shouldn't do that when we can't go right to sleep…"

"We can't sleep now. We have to go meet Hank and Scott and Logan and debrief on the Professor."

"Right, that," Emma said sleepily.

Jean lifted their clothes from the floor and set them down. "See you in there," she said.

"I'll try not to smell like pussy," Emma replied.

…

Please review/follow/favorite and I'll keep going, or, even better, check out my novel _No Church in the Wild_ (Bacchus Paine on Kindle, , iBookstore), which contains some racier sex and a character shout out to Jean Grey… free preview of the first chapter with explanations on the Rap Genius website.


	19. Chapter 19

It was bad, the thing with Cassandra, really bad – but Emma knew that already. She just leaned back against the desk and listened to Jean tell Scott how bad it was. Hank had clearly worked through it. Cassandra's brain was with the Shiar in Charles' body. Logan asked a classic Logan question, the kind where he says, "if this monumental circumstance is so monumental why is it not apparent? Out of sight, out of mind." Of course, now this one was in sight. An extra-mutated, paranormal one in a borrowed body, in clear sight.

Jean stood with her back to Charles 'disembodied psyche and looked back at Emma, and they wondered together whether he sensed what was happening between them. Jean had taken special measures to ensure he could not, but, he was Charles Xavier. The onion of discovery kept unpeeling around them.

Emma eventually remarked as though she hadn't worked through all of this with Jean just recently, for show.

Then Hank explained the infections of the brain that held Charles' consciousness, that it would be a week before the brain was consumed by them. So there was something of a rush. Jean made it clear she would give Charles' last "statement to mankind" to the media.

They all settled into the mass of the conflict relatively quickly, but in relative silence. While Logan, Hank and Scott digested, Emma made a point to make her early exit to be apart from the digestion. She didn't want to risk giving away that she and Jean had been through it all together already.

Jean had meant to try to talk to Scott that afternoon, once she explained the gravity of the situation to him and made it clear that they had to focus on survival rather than working through their issues, to tell him that they should stay apart for a while. But then as soon as he walked out of the room he had taken off in the Blackbird, unannounced, with a cabin that that probably still smelled like the de-stressing fuck she and Emma had in there earlier that afternoon.

Then Emma made her way back to the hanger to find it empty. She thought at Jean: *Someone's in the Blackbird.*

**Fuck,** Jean thought, and the rawness of it woke her deeper connection with Emma, spilling to Emma the existence of her intent to have a discussion with Scott, oops. They listened to Scott explain that he was off to find Xorn, feeling a pit form in their stomachs at once. He was over the Pacific before they realized, and Even when Jean revealed some very limited information about her trip to China with Emma, Scott insisted. They could figure out the implication of what their discovery meant later, her thought, because they had a pressing need for a healer. He kicked Jean out of his head, abruptly.

*Fuck, * Emma retorted.

Just then, Jean felt Hank's pain, realizing at last the grave insult of bestiality Cassandra had lain upon him, and she headed to his lab to talk to him, chatting with Logan along the way. Saucy Logan. Maybe she and Emma could do that together. That would be worth wiping a memory…

Jean chastised herself immediately. But she got a little wet.

That night, Jean got to Emma's room quite early, comparatively, though they'd both spent the majority of the day dealing with inconsequential student crises, distracted from their everyday tasks by the crisis but unable to do anything in the meantime to assuage it. They'd spent a long time licking one another, lazily. And when they woke in the morning, they walked the grounds together sort of unabashedly, passing students playing in the grass. Emma recounted her several inane encounters with the students of yesterday, and Jean smiled.

_[quoted]_ "I'm a patient woman, but sometimes I wish all children had a single neck and I was knotting a rope around it," she told Jean.

"Emma!" Jean said aloud, as she telekinetically tweaked Emma's clit. "I think the students this year are a terrific bunch." Emma wished she count pinch Jean in reply.

"Well, that's very civil of you, Jean. Only _you_ would use the words 'terrific bunch' to dignify this horde of ghastly illiterates."Jean smiled at that.

Emma recalled she hadn't asked about Jean's evening before they'd fallen into cunnilingus together last night, and voiced it to Jean in verbal terms others wouldn't understand.

"And now I have this insane press conference," Jean said. "What do I know about talking to the media? I have the flu and I'm totally stressed out…"

"They love jokes, dear," Emma told Jean as she threw a lustful glance and the two of them switched to speaking mentally, where they could have their flirty quips without reserve. Before they parted ways Emma stopped Jean on the path and took her shoulders, turning Jean to face her. Emma looked both ways to confirm there were no onlookers, then she let her arms bend and she pulled Jean in close.

*Look at something with me,* Emma said. She pulled Jean into her state of mind that day after her last media appearance, when they had first bumped into each other, before there was even a hint of mental connection between them. When she had fled the press conference because she was so flushed at how marvelous Jean was at it. Emma made sure Jean felt the wonder just as she had, hoping it would comfort Jean in the face of her upcoming reappearance.

Jean laughed. "Thank you," she whispered.

Scanning nearby for any little brains that might be within earshot, Emma leaned into Jean and kissed her, softly, letting her the tip of her tongue hug Jean's lips lingeringly, softening into the warmth of Jean's mouth. Then she pulled away.

"So, Logan?"

Jean had every impulse to play coy, she even bowed her head and batted her eyes a little bit reflexively, but she knew it was useless. "The thought occurred to me, yes."

"And how does it occur to you now?"

"I…" Jean looked at Emma, pouting a little. "I've admitted I find him sexy."

"Oh, yes, darling, I know that. Are you of a mind that you'd want to bone him together, I mean?"

Jean paused as she surveyed her desires. "Maybe. Are you?" Jean's eyebrows lifted.

"Maybe," Emma replied.


	20. Chapter 20

[At _New X-Men_ 123-124]

Emma gazed googly-eyed at Jean while she finished off her conversation with the reporters after the press conference, Jean having, once again, moved them without direct psychic manipulation. Emma didn't feel Jean's collapse coming, though over the past few days she had felt a sort of weakness in Jean, a crawling invader in some part of her.

So, when Jean crumbled onto the ground it took everything Emma had not to just dip down and cuddle her. [_quoted_] "Don't worry," she told the reporters, "she always does this sort of thing for dramatic effect." But to Jean, she said *Darling, what's happened?*

*I don't know exactly,* Jean replied. But then she felt a warm sweep across her mind, and she tried to stand on her own: "Oh god," *Emma*…"Did you feel it? We were scanned. Emma, go to diamond form! Telepathic shutdown! Scott's in danger!"

"No, he's in Tibet," Emma said, confused. If Scott were really in danger Jean would have told her already, shot it through their unique connection.

But then Hank ran outside, at this most opportune moment, and informed them all that the sickness they'd felt for days resulted from an army of nanosentinels deployed by Cassandra in their limbic systems. While Emma called for everyone to go indoors, Jean realized that they had prepared for too long with no results. The hour of attack was upon them, and Scott, was, in fact, not alright. He was in the grip of Cassandra's overturned Shi'ar. This same Shi'ar at that moment launched projectiles toward the Westchester mansion from space, lighting the sky with fire, and moments later the Gladiator appeared, clearly compromised by Cassandra, and explained that he intended to remove all mutants from Earth. That was a real downer.

Emma left Jean to run back and save the cuckoos while Hank took Jean. Jean understood. But she could still feel Scott, far away, a captive, and she couldn't parse the feelings for Scott and Emma in her head in light of the general apprehension that plagued her. For this reason she couldn't act quickly enough to stop the Shi'ar invaders from putting an anti-telepathic helmet on Emma promptly as she fled for the cuckoos, and that helmet severed the mental connection they had cherished for what seemed like forever, now.

But even as Jean realized what was happening outside, she was under a stampede of students scared shitless trying to listen to Hank explain about the invading virus. _She did this to us_, Jean realized, cursing Cassandra. But then she knew she'd have to think like Cassandra, learn from her earlier invasions of Cassandra's psyche. And when Jean submerged herself in Cassandra's essence she saw exactly how this disease, these nanosentinels, played into Cassandra's plot.

She made the decision then to manipulate the stampede, calm the students, direct them down to the vault. An invasion, yes, but one conducted for their own safety. *Emma,* Jean called, knowing that Emma couldn't hear her. She wanted to try anyway.

Jean and Hank loaded the students into the vault with insufficient urgency ("You do realize that there are Shi'ar Imperial Superguardians outside, don't you?"). Then Hank, blissfully, told Jean to go out and help Emma, outside, where the Superguardians were. Jean was gone in a flash.

She hadn't gone fifty feet when she found a flying Shi'ar Superguardian in her path, racing towards her. Jean kicked back with all the force of her legs and her telepathy together, and elbow to the gut, a fist to the chin, and the guardian fell. But she was only one of many, and the others were everywhere, crawling through the mansion like a termite infestation. Hank began to worry the Shi'ar might succeed at sterilizing them all.

He and Logan and Jean did what they could to battle back the invaders before Jean rushed back into the vault with the kids to shield them from the oncoming storm. The very vault that held Cassandra's decaying version of Charles' Xavier's brain.

Then, it was time for diplomacy. The Gladiator burst into the vault and explained to Jean that she and all of her students were to be sterilized. Jean pleaded ("they're only children") even as she started trying to pick the locks of Gladiator's Shi'ar psychic protections. She hadn't gotten far when they were all interrupted.

And, to Jean's great relief, the interruption was a visit from one of Cassandra's victims in space, come to tell the invading Supergladiator force that they had it all wrong, that Lilandra was compromised by Cassandra-a-la-Charles, that their orders came from an interstellar criminal.

It was a relief precisely because Jean was, physically, on the verge of collapse. The nanosentinels that Cassandra sprinkled on several X-Men who'd been showered with her blood took time, but now they were taking a grave toll.

Hank promised Jean he'd try to come up with something just as Xorn so "kindly" helped free Scott from the hold of the Shi'ar, out in space. His clash with those still under Cassandra's control brought him to stand directly in front of the tank that now held her. Now he, too, realized she was made of nothing but psychic energy, and his blasts could do nothing about that.

[_quoted_] "You think you've faced the worst, don't you?" Cassandra asked him, chiding, "You think surviving a broken heart and a shattered soul makes you strong and special?"

_A broken heart?_ Scott thought, wavering. She said more, more lies, he thought, then suggested he end himself in response. It almost sounded reasonable to Scott, then.

On the ground, Emma's anti-psychic helmet retreated seemingly of its own accord, pulled back by the removal of loyalty to Cassandra from the Shi'ar frced that had constructed it. She gasped for Jean the way a drowning man gasps for air, but in response she felt only sickness. *Oh darling, what's happened,* Emma asked.

*Cassandra…nanosentinels…in the blood she sprayed on us. On me….*

Through their psychic connection, Emma felt Jean sweating with agony. *Oh my god,* Emma thought, as the implications washed over them both. Cassandra, she had planted this nanosentinel virus to weaken them for an attack she knew was coming. To make sure the X-men were disabled when she made her move. And she was making her move, now…

But now there was a more pressing problem. Hank thought he knew what Cassandra was after, an elixir of the U-Men she conveniently left here at the mansion when she departed. Hank could save Cassandra's body with it, and, as a result, save Charles' mind before its degeneration was complete. They could really use Charles just now.

Emma was weak on the ground outside, but she felt Jean scream and plead with Hank to stop, to let the body die, to leave it to her to be custodian of Charles disembodied psyche. Saving the body was precisely what Cassandra wanted – she was coming back to claim it soon.

"Jean, you're delirious! Enough! I've watched you pushing yourself to the limits of your telepathy, Jean. Enough! It's going to consume you and you cannot confront Cassandra in this condition, no matter what you think."

Jean explained, sweating, rabid-eyed, with a wavering voice that she had been building a spot in her own mind already where the Professor could reside, presumably temporarily. She'd already been picking up the memories that fell from the decaying brain and saving them for Charles' return. Hank was skeptical, to say the least, but the look in Jean's eyes told him that she couldn't be dissuaded. He left her to it.

*Oh Jean, are you sure? Please be careful. He's got a big brain to try to have as a headguest. I couldn't bear it if anything…* Emma pleaded.

*I don't have a choice anymore.*

And so, Jean reached out to Charles, to what was left of Charles, submerged as it was in psychic goo and sustained by a rather fancy version of a fishtank. Charles himself was the last one Jean had to convince.

"It's time to die, Charles. It's all right. Let go. Die, Charles. I'm going to catch you." And Emma felt the spread of fire over Jean's back, could feel the heat it gave Jean from outside the house, a heat much like the heat they made together.

But then, it was done, and Charles was inside Jean's mind, and she felt like she'd soon explode. Weak with disease, desperate, she'd overestimated her capabilities. The disease did much more than any of them had imagined. Jean could feel the memories evaporating like fog in the sunlight, and she called out to Hank to help her. In return, he only informed her that Cassandra was back, here, now. Outside, preparing to exterminate them.

"I see her," Jean told Hank.

Cassandra eliminated the Gladiator first, when he stood up to her. Emma would have run to them, run into the mansion to put her dimond body in front of Jean, but she was still with the cuckoos, who had taken the opportunity to reveal a traitor in their midst, a floating mass of green tendrils they had called a boy's name back when it looked like a boy and pretended to be Esme's boyfriend. Emma thought it prudent to dig deep into him, even given the surrounding chaos. Jean was too consumed to respond. Emma was under the impression that the fight itself was doing the consuming, and she let their connection expire so that Jean could focus on saving them all.

And then, down near the vault with Hank, Jean's voice began to alternate between her own and Charles' as she continued to sweat with the illness. Blood began pouring from her ears, her nose. Memories poured form her head into the ether, and she couldn't tell if they were Charles' or her own. Jean swayed, and in the sway she felt certain it was about five years earlier, the most recent memories now hidden form her groggy consciousness. At precisely the moment Scott quite literally teleported into their hallway with Xorn.

"Scott, you're my favorite superhero," she said weakly when she looked at him, watching him emerge from the flash of light that brought the pair of them here. Outside, Emma's stomach clenched painfully.

"I love you, too," Scott said. Jean, his Jean, looked so weak, so vulnerable. Emma's stomach clenched again. Then Jean collapsed, unconscious. Scott carried her to the infirmary with Hank. Xorn followed. Tears rose in Emma's eyes.

Scott implored Xorn to heal Jean, as he had healed others, he was a healer, after all, wasn't he? Xorn smiled within his helmet. Then he reached out his hands and encircled Jean's head, and he magnetically disabled each and every one of the nanosentinels Jean carried. He informed the group only that they were dead. He didn't specify how he'd managed it.

Emma felt a rush of relief when she sensed Jean had regained consciousness – not from their direct mental connection, which she was trying to avoid, but from scanning those in the room with Jean. Jean could barely moan, but Scott comforted her like it was their wedding night.

Jean breathed deeply, stood, and took the opportunity to reveal to Scott and Hank the full history of the trick and circumstances Cassandra had used to overthrow the professor. Xorn listened carefully. It took them all a moment to realize that it was the Professor talking – not Jean.

In the background, Jean reached for Emma again. She didn't like what she saw, but she couldn't investigate now. Charles had need of Cerebra's amplified psychic reach, and it was all Jean could do to force her body to utter "and can I just remind everyone that Emma is still on the loose," _somewhere outside_…

…

_More to come…_

Thanks everyone for the reviews! Keeps me going. And…

I'm trying to reach out to other "bi"/"pan"/"queer"/"gender queer"/"curious"/"human" readers and because I hope they'll consider reading my novel, _No Church in the Wild_, which is published under this pen name. The number one adjective used to describe it has been "titillating." You can get it on all major venues or checkout a free preview on the Rap Genius website.

But I'm still very psyched that some people seem to like this story, and I hope you'll follow for the updates.


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